Dirt and Noses
by DSieya
Summary: Call her a neat freak. [rhr, oneshot, implied hg, written before dh]


_so, basically, this is seven pages and three thousand words of mush that i thought of while rereading book one. okay, so it's not really mush, but then it is. i don't know. i can't explain. just read it (and review); it took me a week to write so i expect that it's good. :) _

_the first section and any dialogue i borrowed from mrs. rowling belongs to her and book one; the second section likewise but to book five. third section's mine set after book six but the characters are still most definitely hers._

* * *

Eleven year-old Hermione Granger bounced nervously in her train seat, trying to concentrate on _Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1) _by Miranda Goshawk but finding it particularly difficult due to the pit of anxiety and fear brewing in the bottom of her stomach. 

Frowning, she subconsciously smoothed her hair down the side of her head, then leaned forward and tried to concentrate.

_Chapter Three_, she read. _Reversing Spells. _Alohomora _(a-LOH-huh-mora) is a spell that can unlock most doors; that is, doors that have not been enchanted by _Colloportus _(Standard Book of Spells (Grade 4))_...

That was the fifth time she had read that sentence.

Sighing, irritated, she snapped the book shut smartly and stood, laying it neatly onto the seat she had previously sitting in and bringing up her wrist to check her watch.

They've been on the train for hours – they should be at Hogwarts by now, shouldn't they?

Lifting up the unfamiliar black robes, she stepped over her seatmate's items (she had quite rudely left it sprawled messily everywhere). She caught sight of her brand new pink and white sneakers, and smiled. Her mother had bought them for her, saying that her old shoes were much too worn and it was a _castle_, honestly, she was going to need new shoes! She had given them to Hermione right before she boarded the train with a proud smile and a long embrace; Hermione knew that it would be a while before she was able to see her mother again.

She was still smiling a bit as she started to make her way past the compartments, trying to edge her way past people who were laughing and chasing each other around – people older than her, mind. It was so annoying and juvenile that the smile turned into a frown, and the faint twinkle in her brown eyes disappeared as they rolled upwards.

_Honestly._

For a minute, she pushed her way past people and was careful not to apologize only because it wasn't _her_ fault that they were running. Snatches of conversation were carried to her ears.

"_Really_?"

"Yes, I hear he's in compartment thirty-eight -- "

"Are you _sure_ it's him?"

"'Ccording to Fred or George Weasley – I heard 'em talking about it back on the platform -- "

Hermione shoved past this group of people blocking up the hall, but they were so entranced in their conversation not one noticed.

Finally, she reached the conductor's car; he was a gruff-looking man with a protruding belly and strong hands but he tossed her a glance that was friendly enough.

"Excuse me, sir," she started politely. "How much time do we have?"

He shrugged. "Almost there – prob'ly 'bout ten minutes or so." His voice, like his appearance, was very gruff.

Hermione smiled, thanked him, then turned around and left.

She was almost at her own compartment when she heard a horrible yelp – several people fell silent and craned their necks curiously to see what was going on, and moments later three boys – two huge ones and one smallish, pale, blonde one, all of whom looked especially unpleasant – scrambled out of the compartment started walking quickly in the other direction.

Frowning, she edged past the muttering people and pushed into the compartment – noting that it was number thirty-eight. She'd already been in here before.

"What _has_ been going on?" she asked, looking at the utter mess that the compartment was – sweets were all over the floor, and the tall red-head one was bending down, picking up his rat by the tail.

"I think he's been knocked out," he said, effectively ignoring Hermione. "No – I don't believe it – he's gone back to sleep."

She watched with a slightly open mouth as the rat curled up in its owner's palm.

"You've met Malfoy before?" he asked Harry Potter.

Harry, who had also not offered any acknowledgment of her presence, started explaining something about Diagon Alley. Hermione impatiently crossed her arms and tapped her foot.

"I've heard of his family," the redhead - Ron, was his name - replied darkly. "They were some of the first to come back to our side after You-Know-Who disappeared. Said they'd been bewitched. My dad doesn't believe it. He says Malfoy's father didn't need an excuse to go over to the Dark Side."

She was reminded amusedly of Star Wars once Ron Weasley finally turned to her.

"Can we help you with something?"

"You'd better hurry up and put your robes on, I've just been up to the front to ask the conductor, and he says we're nearly there. You haven't been fighting, have you?" She scrutinized them – _boys_! "You'll be in trouble before we even get there!"

"Scabbers has been fighting, not us," said Ron, scowling at her. She scowled back, not even wanting to bother to point out the illogic of that. "Would you mind leaving while we change?"

"All right – I only came in here because people outside are behaving very childishly, racing up and down the corridors," she replied, looking at Ron Weasley who she was not sure she liked very much. She felt her eyes being drawn to his nose, which was smudged. Oh, bother. "And you've got dirt on your nose, by the way, did you know?" she pointed out. Turning and walking out, she missed the glare that was steady on the back of her head.

* * *

"Oh, I forgot to ask you," said Hermione brightly as she spotted Cho Chang walking into the Great Hall, her shiny black hair flowing behind her back. "what happened on your date with Cho? How come you were back so early?" 

She watched Harry hesitate. "Er... well, it was..." He pulled a dish of rhubarb crumble toward him and started to heap more onto his plate, "a complete fiasco, now you mention it."

As he told her what happened in the little tea shop, Hermione became more and more exasperated as she watched him become more and more worked up over the day's events. She resisted the urge to interrupt, to roll her eyes, or to sigh several times.

"... so then," he continued, taking his last bite of crumple, "she jumps up, right, and says, 'I'll see you around, Harry,' and runs out of the place! I mean, what was that all about? What was going on?"

It was then that Hermione, watching the back of Cho's head, sighed and decided that the male sex was really much too dense to handle the real world. "Oh, Harry," she started, slowly. "Well, I'm sorry," - and, really, she was - "but you were a bit tactless."

And, right on cue, he got angry, "_Me_, tactless? One minute we were getting on fine, next minute she was telling me that Roger Davies asked her out, and how she used to go and snog Cedric in that stupid tea shop – how was I supposed to feel about that?"

...Yes. Much too dense.

"Well, you see," she started patiently and slowly, piecing the words together in her mind as she felt like she was trying to teach an sledgehammer how to perform a correct vertebrate transfiguration. "you shouldn't have told her that you wanted to meet me halfway though your date."

"But, but -" he stammered. "but – you told me to meet you at twelve and to bring her along, how was I supposed to do that without telling her - ?"

Hermione resisted the urge to pick up the orange juice pitcher and to smash it against her head.

"You should have told her _differently_. You should have said it was really annoying, but I'd _made_ you promise to come along to the Three Broomsticks, and you really didn't want to go, you'd much rather spend the whole day with her, but unfortunately you thought you really ought to meet me and would she please, please come along with you, and hopefully you'd be able to get away more quickly?" She paused for a moment, then more as a joke, she added, "And it might have been a good idea to mention how ugly you think I am too."

"But I don't think you're ugly."

Oh, _honestly_. He was so clueless! She started to laugh.

"Harry, you're worse than Ron..." She caught a lanky, soaked form stomp into the Great Hall, the bright familiar red hair catching her eye at once.

She sighed.

"Well, no, you're not," she conceded. After a pause as she watched the wiry form make his way over to the pair, she turned brisk once again. "Look – you upset Cho when you said you were going to meet me, so she tried to make you jealous," she explained. "It was her way of trying to find out how much you liked her."

"Is that what she was doing?" Harry asked, as she watched Ron drop across from her and start pulling every dish within reach toward himself. "Well, wouldn't it have been easier if she'd just asked me whether I liked her better than you?"

She watched Ron pile food onto his plate. Yes, that probably would be easier. She let out a breathe through her nose.

"Girls don't often ask questions like that."

"Well, they should!" he exclaimed, more childishly than anything "Then I could've just told her I fancy her, and she wouldn't have had to get herself all worked up again about Cedric dying!"

"I'm not saying what she did was sensible, I'm just trying to make you see how she was feeling at the time."

"You should write a book," Ron said, the first sentence since he walked in. "Translating mad things girls do so boys can understand them."

_God knows you need it._

"Yeah," Harry agreed; she felt rather than saw him slump beside her; she was too busy scowling at Ron. "So, how was Quidditch practice?"

He really needed to get that mud off his face.

"It was a nightmare."

"Oh, come on." Hermione looked at Ginny for help. "I'm sure it wasn't that -"

"Yes, it was. It was appalling. Angelina was nearly in tears by the end of it."

Hermione opened her mouth, then closed it again as Harry fell silent beside her as well. Instead of eating (she had already finished her dinner long before), she watched Ron wolf down his dinner as if he hadn't eaten since summer. The rest of the meal was in relative silence; Ginny and Ron were too grumpy and hungry to say much, and Hermione was too distracted to speak anymore to Harry.

Distracted, of course, by the bit of mud that Ron had missed when doing a haphazard wipe of his face with, apparently, his Quidditch robes.

God, it was annoying.

Really.

Irritating.

Dinner was finished; Harry and Hermione were heading up toward the common room with Ron and Ginny went toward the baths. For a few corridors, they walked together, in relative silence, as it was during dinner. Harry and Ginny were talking quietly to her right as Ron ambled along to her left, still quiet and watching his feet take their long strides.

She had never cared for Quidditch, but if it was so important to her three closest friends... well, it certainly was a mood damper, to say the least.

Sighing, she watched the portrait ahead of them; a knight galloped though a forest track. It was a favorite portrait of hers, mostly because the occupants rarely moved out of it. As far as she could tell, the knight was competing for the Lady's hand but he never quite won. It was at this portrait where the four were going to go their separate ways; to the left were the baths, to the right was the continued route to the common room.

Looking upwards and to the left, she glanced at Ron, and opened her mouth to say something to Ron when It caught her eye again.

Oh, bother.

With a huff, she suddenly stopped and reached up with both hands, effectively stopping Ron and pulling his face down so she could better reach it.

"What the bloo -"

Hermione frowned, then wiped the smear of mud off of the side of his nose with a corner of her sleeve a little harder than needed.

"Watch your language," she reprimanded, still holding him down by placing her thumb under his jaw and her palm against his cheek, her small fingers holding around the angle of his cheekbone.

"I didn't say anything!"

She rolled her eyes, then wiped off the last bit.

"There," she said, proudly, releasing him. She almost laughed at the look on his face.

"It's been bothering me all night," she explained, holding up a bit of mud that was still on her thumb.

He still look baffled.

With a sigh, she turned to find Harry and Ginny looking at them with interest. She frowned at them.

"What?"

* * *

Hermione was at the Burrow, stretched out on her back across the brilliantly green summer lawn with her shirt and shorts clinging to her skin. She had just been swimming in the pond there, but had quickly grown tired of it and decided to warm and relax in the sun instead. 

After a few minutes, Ron had joined her; together, they had watched Harry and Ginny who were supposed to be dancing around each other but then they had danced with each other at the wedding ceremony – she guessed that Harry decided to enjoy his last days of peace as well.

Ron and Hermione were silent; the sun was beating down on their faces and on Ron's chest and on both of their legs, and she reveled in the heat of it.

Hermione spoke.

"I'm going to miss the school." Her tone was sad. She heard Ron let out a breathe.

"No, you're gonna miss showing everyone up in Transfiguration," he murmured sleepily. She frowned over at him, finding his eyes closed with a look of utter relaxation.

Then she did a very un-Hermione-ish thing to do. With a wicked grin, she poked him in the side.

Ron instantly yelped and jumped away, and she let out a laugh and sat up on her elbows, squinting up at him.

"What the bloody hell did you do that for?"

For once, she didn't chide him on his language. "Ticklish, much?"

He stared at her as if she had just spontaneously turned a rather dark shade of purple. Then, "NO."

She laughed, then shot up onto her knees with her hands flying to his waist. He yelled again in surprise, and quickly gripped her wrists and forced them away, and the struggle that ensued caused her to lose her balance and topple sideways onto his legs.

"Ow!"

Hermione looked at him, and for a moment they just stared at each other.

Then she let out a long, insufferable sigh and sat up, shaking one of her hands free. "_Goodness_, Ron," she started to say. "I don't know how you manage to do it, but dirt just seems to gravitate toward your nose -" Reaching up, she used the pad of her thumb to start wiping the side. Then her brown eyes raised to his blue eyes, and she froze.

Ron had the strangest look in his eyes, like he was trying to be annoyed but was secretly enjoying it instead. His brow was furrowed slightly, and he was just watching her intently. Hermione became very aware of the hand still on one of her wrists, very aware of the closeness of him and of the shadows formed by the sun striking his sharp jawline and his collarbone and the muscles in his chest...

Without warning, his mouth was on hers, hard, and she was pushed on her back with a surprised squeak; his elbows dug into the sod on either side of her shoulders, and his rough and weather-stained palms were on her cheeks, fingers entangling into her drying hair and pushing it away from her face.

She almost gasped; never, never before had she expected anything so passionate. A knot in her stomach twisted almost painfully but then it wasn't painful or was it from fear or anger or disgust; the feeling went up to her chest and she felt blood rise to her cheeks and her lips she she responded hungrily to him; her arms weaved up past his shoulders and hooked around his neck, dragging him down farther.

Had any part of her been logical or calculating at that moment in time she would have cursed his skill because she knew how it was honed; however, Hermione was actually quite dizzy and elated (and had she been asked to add one and one or to explain Switching Spells she would not have an answer); instead, she welcomed it with eagerness.

After a while, the had to stop, and he lay his forehead against hers as they gasped in breathes of fresh air; the kiss had been hard and rough and passionate (more like him than anything else), nothing like any of the first kisses she had ever heard about before. Her lips felt bruised, and she could feel the flush in her face and the sweat on her chest and shoulders and arms.

They lay there, and he straightened up slightly and looked her in the face, his eyes unsure if he had done the right thing or had done the thing right; suddenly, his hand reached up and brushed against the bridge of her nose near her right eye.

She looked at him, puzzled.

"You had dirt on your nose."

**THE END**

**

* * *

**_well?_


End file.
